A Life Worth Living
by Zeit's Library
Summary: A prequel of sorts to my RO one-shot Anti-Hero. After the death of the Sniper he was following, the Hunter Kallistei falls under the influence of an evil Scholar who promises to show him a better way to live. It gets worse from there...


He is dead.

It had just started to sink in good, and it still was heavy for Kallistei Konradr to say or think. The past few days had been something of a blur for the young Hunter and after some point he simply stopped thinking about it. The sun and moon flowed through him like water; twisting and turning of their own free will without any attempt from him to discern its time or place.

Yet for all of his efforts to displace himself from time, Kallistei couldn't pull himself away from the one thing tethering him to reality. Which is why, even with his heart and soul yearning for ignorant bliss, he stayed there; sitting underneath the tallest oak tree the two of them could find. It fit him, as Omri himself stated, when they were looking for a place to put his body.

It made sense in the end. Adonis Caskay was, if nothing else, a ridiculously empty-headed country boy. He would've loved being someplace where he could see the sun at anytime of day. For whatever reason, whenever he could, the Sniper would be drawn to trees and spots like this on their journey. Its used to be terribly annoying to the young Hunter to stop and sit and relax, at first. Then it got to be something he looked forward to; especially as the map Adonis followed led them into greater and greater trouble.

Now-

"Kallistei."

That voice: the man he had convinced so many shared the same blood as him. It was, at the time, an absurd proposition for the both of them. It was amazing how easy it had been to get Omri Usoa to play into his little game. Whatever the old man's reasons where, he kept them blithely to himself as he walked with the rest of them.

Today Omri looked a great deal older though. Some gray had started to creep into his morbid looking hair; a side-effect from the past few days. His outfit had been washed and repaired, however his cloak still bore holes and spots of blood from the battle that took Adonis' life. Fate was strange in that way, and its will wasn't lost on the wicked Scholar.

After a moment of nothing, Kallistei looked up from the ball he had put himself in to see his 'Uncle'. It took a minute to break past the emptiness of his face to get to why Omri was there. At first, the young Hunter foolishly believed Omri would try and comfort him, and was more than ready to push him away. Then Kallistei notice something more glaring, more obvious...more final.

"You're leaving."

"We both knew this day would come." Omri stated simply, dropping to a knee in front of Kallistei. "This fantasy, this adventure, is over. We have a responsibility now to go back to our lives."

"...What life? What's left?"

"Your parents? Your home? You were lucky enough to survive and now you have to take advantage of it." The Scholar was as harsh as ever, but he was also the only person Kallistei had left. That Assassin had left after the battle. The Minstrel and Gunslinger had parted from them long before it happened. Outside and far from his luxurious Juno home, this corrosive bastard was the only person he knew and even halfway trusted.

"...I can't go back."

"You can't stay here Kallistei."

"Why not?" Kallistei snapped, leaping to his feet. "I can't just...go home! How could you even say that?"

"And what will you do? You have no zeny and no sense of direction. How far do you think you will last on your own?"

"...I'll figure something out!"

"Yeah. Look, I've been willing to play along with your games little one but they must end here." Omri muttered as he got back to his feet. "Adonis is dead. Without him, you're just another spoiled kid from Yuno. And I? I'm just another Scholar with issues...lots of issues. The lies that tied us together are gone now."

It was true and Kallistei couldn't even try to deny it. There was nothing he could hold over his head, no amount of zeny he could offer Omri to stick around. He would have to go back: nowhere else would take him. Back to being a lone, empty spot in the sparkling and pristine world of Juno society. Back to designed steps his feet could never fit into.

"No. No! No!"

Kallistei's hand almost cracked as he pounded the tree, his eyes wide and horrified. "You-You don't understand! No one understands! You-You can't make me go back to that! I don't want to be just another kid in Juno! I...I don't want to die like that."

A quip rested against Omri's tongue, but he held it. Even for him, it would've been cruel to say what was on his mind: especially with the youth so close to the breaking point. This had obviously been Kallistei's first taste of this sort of tragedy and only then did Omri's blood-drenched past have any real relevance. Right then and there, the difference between his bleak nightmare and the Hunter's vivid dreams clashed and the Scholar understood his doubts.

Not his current doubts, but the ones at the beginning. The ones he felt way back in that hotel lobby in Lighthalzen those many months ago. He was, in no possible sense, capable of dealing with such a situation. How could he be trusted to alleviate the pain of this boy when his life was one endless, crimson river?

"I don't want to just die some arrogant old man! And I don't want to die...like he did." Kallistei's voice cracked, his fingers dug into the freshly dug earth where just a few feet beneath Caskay's body rested. "How come it was just us? How come we were the only ones to bury him? He saved _all of us_! I-I don't want that...for me. I don't want to die like that!"

"Kallistei."

Yet, somehow he was the one at peace. Omri was steady; even with the last few moments of the Sniper's life left tattooed into his memory. Even with the bitter scent of Caskay's blood stuck in his airways, he could see past the death and into the next day and even the day after that. There was a time he thought Kallistei and he shared some similarities. There was a time the Scholar even thought of leaving in the Hunter the bulk of his knowledge by making him his apprentice...and ensuring his ways made it into another generation.

That was impossible now. Caskay's death put too much fear into him and forever scarred his soul. The potential Kallistei had was buried along with him and for a moment Omri truly despised him for it. Dying, it seemed, was Adonis' final, infernal jest to the darkness in the Scholar.

But...there was still some use for the boy.

"Kallistei: do you want to live?"

"What?"

"If you stay here, you will surely die. As you are now, you will never survive." Omri stated slowly, leaning against a side of the tree. He had not expected to be there so long; the sun had already begun to set leaving a mixture of orange and purple in its wake. "You are not strong enough to live like you want to."

"..."

"And the world isn't a big enough place for someone like Kallistei Konradr to disappear. I'm sure its only been by sheer dumb luck you haven't been recognized and taken back to Yuno yet. You will be taken back eventually. Unless..."

"Unless what? I...I just want to stay here."

"You know you can't. You can't stay here: you can't stay with him. You have to move forward now...just as I'm sure Adonis would've wanted you to do." Omri strained the last few words, making them slower and softer to the ear. It worked and whether he knew it or not, Kallistei was no listening intently.

"If you still want to live under your own terms...there is another way."

"What? What else could there be?" Kallistei murmured as he tried to clear the tears from his eyes. "You just said we had to leave. You just said we had to go home."

"Yes but that is only if you can let go of that."

"What?"

"_That_." Omri said coldly, pointing to the very dead center of Kallistei's honey brown eyes. "That thing that is growing inside you. That thing that's beyond your own understanding, because it doesn't feel like anything you've ever known before. Its not anger or hatred. Its more than that and you cannot even comprehend it."

"...I think I know what's going on inside my own head." Kallistei managed to get out. But, beyond his despair he could only sense the gnawing emptiness that came with his great remorse. Remorse of pulling Adonis Caskay into his fantasy. Remorse that he was paralyzed between want and indecision...and fear. It was all just pain and confusion...it was blinding.

"Within you is everything you need to live the life you want. I can help you grasp that."

"How? What do you know?"

"I know that death will eventually smile at us all. All we can do is smile back..." The Scholar sank and sat at Kallistei's left side, making himself abundantly and simply clear. "And only those with blood-stained hands can have the inner strength to smile in the face of death."

"..."

"Can you smile in the face of death little one?"

"...No."

"Not right now maybe. But maybe one day...with my help."

Kallistei may know very little about the world and how it worked, but he had been around Omri Usoa more than long enough to know there would be nothing good coming out of whatever he was suggesting. Of course, smiling at death couldn't possibly fit any definition of 'good'.

But was there an alternative?

Kallistei's mind was pulling a complete blank. Maybe Omri was right for once? The Hunter couldn't bear to return home to a life he was so horribly out of step with. But at the same time, the idea of living like the man he followed in hopes of finding his true hero had becoming equally horrifying to him. All that was left was this; an answer from an old man so similar to the old Professors he had ran from back home.

"You've seen where the life of a hero leads. If that is what you want Kallistei, I'll leave you to it." Omri said as he snatched Kallistei's hands out of the dirt. "However, you yourself said there was more for you and I believe that. There is more in story for your life...more than you can imagine."

Kallistei struggled helplessly for a moment before Omri let him go and watched him scurry away from Caskay's grave. Omri rose back to his feet and looked down upon this broken child, left to his cold, emotionless hands. It wasn't an enviable position, but it was the only way to truly salvage what Caskay had left behind.

"But to do that you have to embrace what you don't know; the thing inside of you that you cannot see. Only I can help you now Kallistei. And through me, you will find freedom. You will find the life you've been looking for and this... this will all seem like a distant dream." Omri said, reaching out to him with one long, pale hand. "I promise you that."

Kallistei stared at the Scholar's hand for what seemed like an eternity. The sun had nearly completely sunk into the horizon, bringing darkness closer and closer to the village. His mind cleared and glazed over, the sounds of calm and peaceful nature filling his entire being as he brushed the hair out of his eyes; knocking his bunny band to the ground. Quietly he reached up and held on with everything he had.

"_Excellent."_


End file.
